I caught a matinee on it’s last day in my city.

3 1/2 stars out of 5

The better a book is, the harder it is to make a film acceptable to fans of the book. Ender was excellent fiction and it is just impossible to reproduce it in less than 2 hours of film.

In spite of this they apparently did a pretty good job, 75% of the public and 65% of the reviewers give it positive marks.

They had to make Ender older than 6 and they couldn’t have him killing other kids even if they were bullies, but anyone can see that this dampens the plot. They needed to compress the time frame and this was the hardest thing to accept but they did a fair job of it. All the actors did a fine job. The ending was decently poignant. They succeeded in capturing Ender’s chilling empathetic quality that set him apart from others, as reflected in this quote.

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them…. I destroy them.”

The ending left open all the possibilities for the sequels that are hoped for by the producers. I don’t see any awards in it’s future but it is well worth picking up the blue-ray in a month or so